Design Techniques

In this installment of the Design Techniques
column, Bill proposes the "event generator" as a Java idiom. The
article provides a background on the concepts of patterns and
idioms, describes the observer pattern, and demonstrates...

This installment of the Design Techniques column
gives you design guidelines that pertain to thread safety. It
provides a background on the concept of thread safety and shows
several examples of objects that are and are not...

This installment of the Design Techniques column
discusses design guidelines that pertain to exceptions. It focuses
primarily on how to decide when to use exceptions, and gives
several examples from the Java API that illustrate...

This installment of the Design Techniques column
discusses the design guidelines that pertain to the end of an
object's life. Columnist Bill Venners gives an overview of the
rules of garbage collection, discusses finalizers, and...

In this installment of the Design Techniques
column, brush up on how -- and why -- to divide a class's
functionality among its methods. Ever the minimalist, Bill Venners
demonstrates how to maximize method cohesion while keeping...

This installment of the Design Techniques column
begins with a quick look at object-design fundamentals, then goes
on to discuss various approaches to designing initializers and
constructors so as to facilitate the proper...

This first installment of the new Design
Techniques column introduces the column and discusses the
larger issues involved in designing Java programs. In addition,
we'll examine the software development process in general, describe
the...